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Lemak Lemang

A walk down the Yellow Brick Road of Malaysia's Corridor of the future

by Jeff Ooi, Malaysia

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Broadcasters: YouTube can be both threat and opportunity

Mar 21, 2007 09:41

The unstoppable phenomenon of YouTube, where 100 million videos are viewed each day, is not something restricted to the radar screens of online citizens. Even broadcasters in cable and terresterial TVs are now faced with this real-world challenge thriving in the cyberworld--the video-sharing Web sites.

The latest response came from members of Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), which is based in Kuala Lumpur.

This blogger was told that participants of the 13th ABU Copyright Committee Seminar hosted by NHK in Tokyo last week concurred on one issue: New media like YouTube can be both a threat and an opportunity for the digital content industry.

The ABU members agreed that some of their content are now made available on the Internet by unsanctioned parties, and broadcasters must ensure that their rights are protected online.

That said, they also agreed that broadcasters must also seize every opportunity that YouTube, and other Web sites of similar genre, has to offer.

Interestingly, some of the ABU broadcasters regard YouTube as a valuable content distribution partner, while others are doubtful of YouTube becoming a collaborative partner in content distribution.

This may have been inspired by a recent development in February when the BBC announced that it has struck a deal to share advertising revenue generated by YouTube traffic.

On the other hand, those who hold negative views attributed it to the difficulty in obtaining the necessary clearances from all rights holders of the intellectual property embodied in a broadcast content.

That highlights a critical issue about the viral threats brought forth by the YouTube genre: Alleged violation of copyrights because of the user-generated content uploaded onto it.

Recently, YouTube was implicated in several claims of copyright infringement. For example, entertainment giant Viacom is now suing YouTube, and its ultimate owner Google, for a whopping US$1 billion for copyright infringement.

Notably, in several past cases, YouTube has defended itself by invoking the safe harbor clauses of the US Copyright Act. However, the latest Viacom suit is still pending.

The concluding note during the ABU seminar, this blogger was told, is that broadcasters should now be prepared to change their business models when necessary in order to adapt to the enormous changes in content delivery.

In Malaysia, politicians and movie producers are now using YouTube to reach out to audience unreachable by traditional media. Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had used YouTube to promote his Anti-War campaign; even his political foe, Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, has been releasing periodical interviews on YouTube to circumvent the muzzled mainstream media which largely black out his news.

The latest is movie producer Grand Brilliance, which belongs to the Media Prima group that owns major newspapers and all terresterial TV networks in the country. It has so far released two preview clips for its forthcoming Mukhsin here and here.

From my personal experience, when this blogger was collaborating with France24 in preparing for the global launch of its satellite channel in English across Europe last December, a lot of video-sharing initiatives were employed.

We used DailyMotion, a Paris-based video-sharing site, instead of YouTube. DailyMotion, being nimble and fledgling, offers a much faster downloading experience.

For now, I am looking forward to beta-testing Joost (formerly The Venice Project), which is a new initiative by people who pioneered Skype.

I waited for over a month just to be given an account to do the beta-testing.

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About Jeff Ooi

Jeff Ooi is an Internet and e-Business consultant based in Kuala Lumpur who's spent the last four years blogging internationally on the tech scene, on anything and nothing. Which doesn't really explain why most of his own technology is about three years out of date. He doesn't even own a PDA after his Palm V crashed. He's on 3G, though... Lemak Lemang refers to coconut-flavored sticky rice stuffed in a bamboo container.